Bataan Death March Essay

World War II was a long bloody battle that lasted for six years. It started on September 1, 1939. The Holocaust was the murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime. The Death Marches were forced marches of prisoners over long distances. The prisoners were abused by the guards and some of them where often killed.

All of that were part of the human experiments that were done by the Unit 731 members. As Staub explained, a person will advance the good of the in-group at the expense of the out-group. Just like how the members of the Nazi party believed that it is their duty to kill Jews, Unit 731 members believed that it is their duty as a Japanese citizen to help out the country even if it means that it will cause the deaths of other. To many people, what they did during their human experiments was horrifying and morally wrong, but to the members there, they believe that their actions are morally right because they were merely trying to aid their country by attempting to create and research new weapons.

During World War II, thousands of POWs experienced isolation and dehumanization in an Japanesethe attemptefforts of the Japanese to make them feel invisible. In Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand, American POW and former Olympic runner Louis “Louie” Zamperini rwas just one of the many soldiers who was dehumanized while in Japanese

The Japanese-American soldiers were discriminated when the they arrived for basic training. At Camp Shelby, Mississippi, many fights broke out between the white commission officers and the Japanese-Americans. Many of the commanding officers insulted them by calling them “Japs”, a rude name that referred to enemy Japanese that bombed

When the U.S. joined the war, the U.S. soldiers expected the Japanese to be like them when it came to fighting, but they were wrong. Sledge, an American Marine (?) soldier , stated his reasons as to why he hated the Japanese, “Historians say we hated the Japs because we were racists. Racism had nothing to do with it. It was the way they fought” (Doc C [2]). Seeing the savagery of the Japanese soldiers influenced the way the U.S. soldiers fought. They went from merciful to doing the same as the Japanese. One of the soldiers even stated how Sledge changed the way he fought. In Guadalcanal, veteran Ore Marion pitched in about how a regimental

In the article “The Japanese-American Internment”, paragraph 8 it states: “In fact more than 25,00 Japanese-American served in the armed forces during World War II, and the all-Japanese-American 442nd combat team inflicted more casualties and received more decorations that any other comparable army unit.” What this means is that even though they were the same race the Japanese still killed their people with no mercy. In fact they had even assassinated most of the army’s population that were their race as if showing a sign of betrayal and its

On December 7, 1941 the Japanese bombed the United States’ Naval Base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii. The Japanese did not stop there. Their attacks continued to the Philippines, where U.S. forces were stationed. After some time battling, the U.S. and Filipino troops had to surrender and the Japanese took them over. The Bataan Death March did not only affect the United States, Philippines, and Japanese, it affected how war trials were held and carried out. The question is how did the Bataan Death March affect modern day warfare?

They would rather die than be taken by the enemy as a prisoner of war. This has been a very old Japanese tradition, which has dated back centuries. This idea that death is better than capture is one of the main reasons why the U.S. government wanted to end the war early. The government wasn’t willing to spend that much of their resources on a war. That after the first year, there would be no public support for it.

Throughout these camps disease, malnutrition, starvation and abuse were rampant in the best camps. Also maintaining these camps were sinister people such as “The Bird” (Mutsuhiro Watanabe), one of the thousands hunted down for war crimes and crimes against humanity after the dropping of the bombs that changed the world forever. The Bird would push the men past there limits through beating and unlivable conditions in the camps he was stationed in. In the case of allied invasion of japan, a “kill all order” was issued to ensure that the POWs wouldn’t fight back against their captors. Which Unbroken showed true in the case of the island Palawan, where a Commanding Officer believed was soon to become the next staging ground for an invasion. “That night the commander sent a radio message to Palawan. “Annihilate the 150 prisoners””. Only eleven men survived the onslaught, who eventually made their way to allied

Japanese soldiers are widely remembered as being cruel and indifferent to the fate of Allied prisoners of war. Cruelty could take different forms, from extreme violence and torture to minor acts of physical punishment, humiliation and neglect. Some prisoners were made to hold a heavy stone above their heads for many hours. Others might be forced into small cells with little food or water.

The most gruesome tales have come to light by the people who survived the merciless actions of the Japanese soldiers. For instance, Tang Shunsan who witnessed and survived the mass murder of Nanking when he left the safety of his hideout behind due to his simple curiosity. Tang and his fellow shoemaker apprentices hid in their house where they converted the doorway so it looked like “...from the outside, a smooth, unbroken wall”(nanking 2). The Japanese soldiers never would have known he was there had he not ventured out into the open to satiate his curiosities of what a Japanese man looked like. Once discovered, he was taken to a large grave for the Chinese people they had killed, and, “...to Tang’s horror, a competition began among the soldiers-a competition to determine who could kill the fastest”(nanking 3 pg. 85). With luck on his side, Tang survived the competition when “ the soldier decapitated the man directly in front of Tang”(nanking 4) and instead of moving out of the way, “Tang also toppled backwards and dropped, together with the body, into the pit”(nanking

“As the war progressed and it became obvious that American technology was superior to Japan’s, the Japanese began utilizing kamikaze pilots to attack Allied ships in the Pacific to balance the power” (Document 3). The Japanese were sending their troops on these planes knowing they would not make it out alive, and the men knew it too. They were practically sent on suicide missions. They already did not value each individual life and while what we did to them may have seemed extreme, it protected our men.

On the march from Shanghai to Nanjing, the Japanese soldiers marched relentlessly as they believed that they could easily gain control of Nanjing before Chinese troops could do as little rebuilding as they could. During the march to Nanjing two Japanese officers had a bet to see who could kill more people by sword. The bet made was that they would see who could kill one hundred people before the capture of Nanjing. After Japan eventually surrendered, the two officers, Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda, were arrested and executed for what they had done in Nanjing. “Those in charge of the Japanese forces went so far as to use killing "competitions" as a way to boost morale among the troops. They even organized interview teams and sent newspaper reporters to conduct interviews with the "winners" of these competitions to kill people.” The Japanese went so far as to reward the people who could kill more

Many atrocities were committed in and around the city; most of them were against civilians. The Japanese soldiers thought that killing these innocent people were fun and games. They invented new ways to brutally murder these people. Some of these violent acts included stabbing, shooting, burning, gutting, digging out heart, decapitation, drowning, castration, and sometimes punching or stabbing objects into the female

One of the most significant encounters of World War II was the Battle of Normandy (the first day of which is commonly referred to as D-Day). Nearly three million soldiers were deployed for the invasion. Those deployed consisted mainly of American and British soldiers, however Canadian, French, Polish, Belgian, and Czech forces were represented as well (Jensen). The battle was fought in an effort to gain European ground and to reduce the German potential for overrunning Russia (Lucas). The Battle of Normandy was significant in that it was the turning point of World War II, incurred heavy casualties on each side, and was the greatest amphibious landing in history (Cohen).